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anyway, but missed by yards. He was out of the building before she hit the ground,
landing in a crouch by the door.
With an effort, she reversed her cloak, and the healing qualities of the white side began
to immediately soothe her strained muscles—though she didn’t hurt as much as she
usually did after using the cloak, since she hadn’t actually done anything this time.
Normally, when she reversed the cloak, she tore people apart. The purplish shadowtendrils
withdrew into the lining now, leaving her with the taste of pomegranate seeds in
her mouth.
The mirror-Daltons stared at her. “That was amazing,” one of them said. “You looked
like…like a panther made of smoke, or…or…”
“I looked like a goddess,” Marla said. She felt marvelous, crystal-sharp and filled with
piercing white light, able to do anything. All her problems were suddenly in focus, and
the solutions were obvious. Why not abdicate control of Felport to Susan Wellstone?
Then Marla could sit back here as Mutex killed off all the other sorcerers in San
Francisco. When he was done, Marla could kill him, and take over this city. It was
bigger and more important than Felport, and once Marla established herself out here,
she could send her warriors to kill Susan as punishment for her insolence. It all made
sense, now that she was wearing the cloak again. Why had she ever taken it off? The
cloak made the imposition of her will as simple as—
“Shit,” Marla said, clutching her head in her hands, grinding her teeth, and squeezing
her eyes shut. The alien intelligence that possessed her in the aftermath of using the
cloak receded a little, and she mentally pushed until it withdrew completely. Her hope
that the cloak’s power over her had faded was unfounded—it still had its hooks deep in
her. “Damn. Yeah, I was like a goddess, I know. Not that it did me much good. Mutex
got away, and Dalton one-point-oh is dead.”
The mirror-Daltons looked at the body of their originator. “Oh, we’re fucked,” one said.
“Oh?” Marla said. Rondeau and B came back into the room. B’s face was milk-white,
and he was shaking. Real life was nastier than any of his visions had led him to expect,
Marla supposed.
The Daltons nodded. One said, “We’ve got…shit, ten minutes until the next ping. When
the computer checks his—our—the original’s current status, and finds him
offline…we’ll just disappear.”
“There’s no way you can, I don’t know, break the connection?” Rondeau said. “Make it
so the computer doesn’t check, or thinks the original is still alive, or something?”
The Daltons looked at each other. “Sure there is,” one said.
“But not in ten minutes,” said the other. “It’s a very secure system, designed to be
impervious to tampering. This is a problem we didn’t expect. When we refresh in nine
minutes…ah, fuck, I don’t want to die.” The Dalton sat on the floor and held his head in
his hands.